The financial crash of 2008 didn’t kill the boozy lunch outright, but it took the wind out of its sails. Ever more Americanised work styles further deflated the tradition, before Covid stamped on it.
But the boozy lunch is back. It’s certainly surprising. After all, we are in the middle of a cost-of-living squeeze and a hospitality staffing crisis so severe that it has driven many restaurants to bankruptcy.
But try meeting a friend for lunch in Farringdon, Soho or Mayfair and you wouldn’t know it. You must elbow your way in, wait for a harried but upbeat maître’d and thank your lucky stars you have a booking – if you do, that is. If not, there’s always Pret.
As a special treat, I met my father recently at the smart Italian restaurant Luca in Clerkenwell. My father, who lives in America, was shocked at what he saw: a packed dining room (I’d had to book the table six weeks previously, providing a hefty deposit on my credit card, before confirming the booking with the restaurant twice), full of large tables of office workers drinking wine from huge glasses. ‘Doesn’t anyone have to work here?’ he asked, genuinely curious.
The tables consisted mostly of men wearing well-cut navy suits who – between signalling to the sommelier and laughing uproariously with their associates – occasionally whipped out laptops. The few womenfolk had glasses of champagne and were clearly fitting lunch in around their work – which they were able to do on their phone. The crowd appeared to be a mix of advertising, marketing and business, plus a few braying American bros with bushy beards and caps. Private equity, I guessed, and evidently delighted to be living in London, where lunch once more goes on and on… and on.
In former days, the boozy lunch may have been the preserve of unbalanced lushes of dubious work ethic. But it is now what the cool – and successful – are doing. Ironically, Covid is to thank for this rejig. Many people squeeze work around the edges of their life, working when and where suits them. Zoom has created a monster. Working from home… or is that the restaurant?
In media, politics, think-tankery, marketing, law and business, the new norm at lunchtime seems to be the jeroboam and tasting menu. I recently met a top dog in the Foreign Office at Franco’s on Jermyn Street. I was not planning to drink, but he was already halfway through a bottle of red when I arrived. Four glasses of champagne later (plus an unimpressed look from ex-chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng at the next table), this gentleman had divulged all sorts of interesting things.
A TV producer friend of mine has worked out how best to handle the boozy lunch. Since hitting the big time she focuses squarely on working lunches that never feature fewer (and rarely more) than two gin martinis. When we sat down recently together at the Wolseley, I realised the shrewdness of her practice: with my Diet Coke and flustered look, I’d never persuade anyone to do anything for me. She, resplendent with her martini, was far more convincing.
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